The last 2 months or so have been very busy around here.

For around 18 months I have had another domain up, but with no real content. I registered warrenpaulharris.com probably two years ago and hosted it some time after that. However… The task of entering large amounts of my library into the system was a Herculean task. I couldn’t even figure out where to start. It was quite literally overwhelming to consider. When you have hundreds of thousands of marketable images, it’s hard to figure out where to start.

Also, most of my images do not fall into a specific size ratio. I tend to create images that are either very wide and not so tall or very tall and not so wide. This produces a very dramatic result, but it means I have to hand-craft a lot of images in the database. A daunting task on a good day. Also, it is necessary to craft all the variables (finish, mounting, framing, rolled, etc.) for each size variation. This is why I never got started. It is a massive amount of work. In the beginning, at least.

So for over a year, the site existed, but had no content. A hollow shell.

Then sometime after we got back from Asia in April, I had an epiphany. The site was not going to populate itself. I needed to do something. I realized if I only added one item every day, but the end of a year I would have 365 items in the catalog!

DUH!

So I started by creating a folder structure on my workstation and started exporting images into it in a variety of categories. Then I set up the web store accordingly. I started by evaluating the historic sales on my Redbubble fulfillment site. The images that had been most popular were placed at the top of the list and I added those to the shop first. Almost immediately I got my first order – from my Route 66 collection.

Winslow

So now every day I plug in at least one item. Usually a lot more. As of this point in time, there are 713 items in the catalog. I have recently been populating the SignZ of Our TimeZ collection. This has been a work in progress for many years and reached its stride about 2 years ago when I settled on a style I really liked. Currently there are 76 items in this collection. It continues to grow on a regular basis.

My Selective Color collection is also well represented in the store with a steadily growing inventory. My Chained – Bikes of NYC series is filling out, but is a long way from complete with only seven items in that category at this time. On our last trip to The Big Apple in 2015, I became fascinated by the sheer volume of abandoned bicycles chained to a variety of structures throughout the city. I decided to document as many of these as possible in the remaining days of our stay. The result is this collection. There are roughly 300 images in the original library, out of which only about 30 or so have been processed. I have a lot of work before this project is anywhere near complete, let alone uploaded to the store. At least I don’t have to worry about being bored…